Guarded By the Symbiote (Monster Security Agency #13)

Chapter One – Wren

Chapter One

Wren

The motel sign flickers above me, half the letters dark, leaving ADISE glowing a sickly yellow against the Los Angeles night sky. It used to be PARADISE, before the first three letters fell from grace.

I fish the key from my jacket pocket and keep walking along the cracked sidewalk, passing the empty ice machine that’s been broken since I checked in a few days ago.

The street is empty at this hour, well past midnight, and this neighborhood in the east side doesn’t attract the kind of people who take evening strolls or jog for their health.

Two streetlights are out between here and my room, creating pools of shadow.

The air smells like garbage and stale beer, and somewhere in the distance a car alarm goes off.

The sound echoes off the buildings and then fades, leaving only the hum of traffic from the freeway a few blocks over.

I don’t hear them until they’re already on me.

One second, the walkway is empty, the next, there’s a hand clamped over my mouth and an arm around my waist, lifting me off my feet before I can even process what’s happening.

I kick backward and my heel connects with something solid, hard enough that pain shoots up my leg, but the grip doesn’t loosen at all.

A second figure moves in front of me and shoves something rough over my head – a bag that smells like dust and gasoline. Everything goes dark.

I thrash and try to bite down on the hand covering my mouth, but whoever grabbed me knows exactly what they’re doing, and they’re already moving, carrying me while I struggle uselessly against them.

My shoulder hits something hard, and I hear a door slide open with the screech of metal against metal.

They throw me forward, and I land on my side on a ridged floor.

The interior of a van. Before I can scramble up or orient myself, hands grab my wrists and yank them behind my back, and plastic digs into my skin so tight it burns.

Zip ties, pulled brutally snug. Something rough gets shoved into my mouth and tied at the back of my head – a gag that tastes like chemicals and cotton and makes me want to retch.

The door slides shut and the engine starts. We’re moving.

I force myself to breathe through my nose, slow and steady despite the panic that wants to claw its way up my throat, because panic won’t help me.

I need to think clearly if I’m going to survive whatever this is.

I shift on the floor until my back hits the wall of the van, then focus on the sounds around me and try to build a picture of what’s happening.

Two people in the front seats, maybe three, their voices low and indistinct over the engine noise.

The van turns right out of the parking lot, tires squealing slightly on the turn.

My wrists throb where the zip ties cut into them, and I can already feel my hands starting to go numb.

I flex my fingers to keep the blood flowing and count the seconds between turns to try to track where we’re going.

Left turn, sharp enough that I slide across the floor, then straight for what feels like two minutes, maybe more.

Right turn, gentler this time, and another long stretch where the road gets rougher and the van bounces over potholes.

We’re leaving the city center, heading east maybe, or toward the industrial district near the ports, where the warehouses sprawl for miles. Either way, we’re going somewhere isolated, somewhere they can do whatever they plan to do without witnesses.

The ride stretches on and on, long enough that my shoulders start to ache from the angle of my arms, and the bag over my head makes it increasingly harder to get enough air through my nose.

Finally, after what feels like an hour, the van slows and makes a sharp turn onto what sounds like gravel from the way it crunches under the tires. We roll to a stop and the engine cuts off.

The door slides open and hands grab my arms, hauling me out of the van without ceremony or care.

My feet hit concrete and someone steadies me when I stumble, their grip iron-tight on my biceps.

The air smells different out here, like old metal and something damp and organic that makes my stomach turn.

It’s a warehouse, almost certainly, or maybe a factory that’s been abandoned and repurposed.

They walk me forward, and I count the steps because it’s the only thing I can do, the only way to maintain some sense of control over a situation where I have none.

Twelve steps until we go through a door, and the temperature drops, the air smelling stale and recycled.

Footsteps echo in what must be a large space, the sound bouncing off distant walls.

They guide me to the right and then stop, and someone pushes down on my shoulders until I’m sitting in a chair.

The bag comes off my head, and I blink against the dim lights. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust and make sense of what I’m seeing: concrete floor, stained and cracked, metal support beams reaching up to a high ceiling, and partitions blocking off sections of the warehouse.

Three men stand in front of me, and I take them in one by one because details matter and I need to remember everything.

The one in the middle is human, tall and lean with blond hair swept back from his face and sharp features that might be handsome if not for the coldness in his eyes and the way he looks at me like I’m something he’s evaluating for purchase.

A scar cuts through his left cheek, from his ear to the corner of his mouth, pale and raised.

He pulls a cigarette from a pack in his shirt pocket and lights it with a silver lighter, the flame briefly illuminating his face.

The other two are the ones who grabbed me off the street.

The one on the left has skin like stone, gray and textured like concrete, with cracks running through it.

A golem, easily recognizable by the way his skin catches the light.

He’s massive, easily seven feet tall, with shoulders that could break through walls.

The one on the right is pale in a way that has nothing to do with complexion and everything to do with death.

His skin is stretched tight over bones that jut out at odd angles, and his eyes are sunken so deep they look like holes in his skull.

His lips are pulled back in something that’s not quite a smile, revealing teeth that are too sharp and too many.

Some kind of undead, but I can’t tell what exactly, and I’m not sure I want to know.

The blond man takes a drag from his cigarette and studies me for a long moment.

He smokes and watches while I sit there with my hands still tied behind my back, trying not to show fear.

Then he reaches forward, casual and unhurried, and unties the gag from around my head.

It comes away wet with saliva, and I work my jaw, tasting blood where the fabric cut into the corners of my mouth.

“Who are you?” he asks, and his voice is smooth and pleasant.

“Who’s asking?” I say carefully, not wanting to sound too adamant.

“I don’t think you’re in a position to play games. I ask the questions, you answer. Let’s try again. What’s your name?”

I lick my cracked lips, studying him from head to toe. He’s confident, powerful, and knows he’s in control. The only thing I notice that’s out of place is the way his fingers twitch when he takes drag after drag from his cigarette, like the hits of nicotine he’s getting are never enough.

“Wren Hayes,” I answer.

“What do you do, Wren Hayes?”

“I’m a chemist.”

He smiles, and it doesn’t reach his eyes at all.

“We know. We’ve been watching you for a while now, cataloguing where you go and what you do. Looking for work, aren’t you? Having some trouble finding it.”

I don’t answer because there’s nothing to say that won’t sound defensive or weak, so I just hold his gaze and wait for him to continue.

“Prison record,” he says, tapping ash onto the floor without looking away from my face. “Makes things difficult, doesn’t it? Employers don’t like that sort of thing. They see that box checked on the application, and suddenly, they don’t have any positions available.”

“No,” I say. “They don’t.”

“What did you do? Before you got caught.”

“I made things people wanted.”

“Illegal things.”

“Sure.”

He takes another drag and exhales slowly, the smoke drifting up toward the ceiling and disappearing into the shadows.

“For how long did they put you away?”

“A year.”

“Must have been hard. Prison.”

I hold his gaze, slightly squinting at him.

“I don’t like talking about it.”

He laughs and takes another pull from his cigarette.

“Fair enough. Let’s talk about chemistry instead. Tell me about synthesis processes. Temperature control, pH balancing. And don’t hold back on me, I know exactly what you were cooking in that little lab of yours.”

I run through the basics, explaining the principles without getting too technical because I don’t know how much he understands, and I don’t want to sound like I’m showing off.

He asks about supernatural components, and I shift to explaining how human chemistry combines with supernatural biology, how the two systems interact in ways that imply understanding both.

Basilisk venom requires precise temperature control because it degrades above certain thresholds and becomes useless or even toxic. Vampire blood needs pH balancing to prevent coagulation that ruins its properties.

His questions come fast, but they’re not trying to trip me up or catch me in a lie, they’re just testing me to make sure I know what I’m talking about. I answer without hesitation, and I watch his expression change from suspicious to satisfied.

He finishes his cigarette and immediately lights another one, the lighter clicking open and shut. He leans back against a support beam and studies me through the smoke.

“Our previous chemist isn’t available anymore. We need someone with your particular skill set.”

Ah, there it is. The reason why I’ve been kidnapped in such a quick, efficient way. They don’t want me hurt, they need me in one piece.

“What’s in it for me?”

“Money. Protection. Steady work doing what you’re good at.” He pauses and gives me a lazy smile. “But first, you need to prove you can actually do what you say you can do.”

I hold his gaze. “Fine.”

He nods to the golem, who pulls a knife from his belt and steps behind me with footsteps that make the floor vibrate. The blade cuts through the zip ties, and blood rushes back into my hands. I flex my fingers and feel pins and needles in my palms, painful but better than the numbness.

“This way,” the blond man says.

They lead me deeper into the warehouse, past empty pallets and abandoned equipment covered in dust. We stop at a partition wall made of plywood and metal studs, and he opens a door, then gestures for me to go through.

The lab is small, maybe ten feet by twelve, with a single work bench against the far wall, and shelving units on either side.

There are burners, beakers, measuring tools, temperature gauges – all of it basic equipment, but functional and well-maintained.

Ingredients are laid out on the work surface in labeled containers, neatly organized.

The golem and the undead take up positions on either side of the door, blocking the only exit. The blond man leans against the wall and lights yet another cigarette, and I’m starting to think he goes through multiple packs a day.

“Show us what you can do.”

I move to the work bench and look at everything, taking inventory of what’s available and what condition it’s in. The equipment is older, but someone has taken good care of it, and the ingredients are labeled with dates and lot numbers. I can work with this. I can make what they want.

I reach for a pair of latex gloves sitting on the bench and pull them on, one finger at a time, feeling the material stretch and snap against my wrists.

As I begin, I hear a low, tender voice speak right into my thoughts. Male, strong, deeply concerned, as if he’s been holding off until this moment, when he can interrupt me without distracting me and putting me in more danger than I’m already in.

“Are you all right?”

I don’t react outwardly, don’t pause in my movements or give any indication that I’ve heard anything unusual. I just think my response as clearly as I can, directing it toward the presence I can feel in the back of my mind and deep under my skin.

“Never better.”